AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She stared off into the darkness, the gloom dispelled only by the path lights overhead. The rain had picked up, and Sean could feel a chill seeping into his bones.
“No,” she finally said.
“So how then?”
“Peter Bunting recruited me for the program seven years ago.”
CHAPTER
46
MICHELLE MAXWELL HAD BEEN BUSY up in Maine while her sidekick was traipsing between D.C. and New York. She’d met with Eric Dobkin and gone over what the Maine State Police knew about Carla Dukes’s death. The most telling piece had been that an expedited autopsy had been done and the slug removed from the woman’s brain. It was a .32-caliber and had been matched to the slug found in Ted Bergin. There was no forced entry in Dukes’s home, so she might have let the person in. That could mean that Dukes and Bergin had known the same killer. Yet how could that be? They had both only recently come to the area and, so far as anyone knew, didn’t even know each other.
Was the killer a cop? Or an FBI agent?
That’s what Michelle was thinking now, even more strongly than before. And if that was true, it was beyond troubling.
She had also gone over to Cutter’s Rock to see from a distance if anything unusual was going on. She had set up her observation post on a high point that allowed her to see the compound almost in its entirety. On the surface everything seemed normal. Guards were at their posts. Gates were closed. Patrols were ongoing. The fence was no doubt electrified. She was there for an hour and saw only one visitor go in and out the whole time.
But that one visitor had been Brandon Murdock. Had he gone to see Edgar Roy? That would hardly be legal, since Roy was represented by counsel now and was in no shape to be questioned or to waive any of his rights. Or maybe Murdock had gone to search Dukes’s office? To see if any incriminating evidence had been left behind. Evidence that might lead to Murdock, perhaps, if he was involved in this somehow?
As Michelle had been about to leave her post, she noticed something unusual. She’d done one more sweep of the surrounding countryside, and her optics picked up on another pair of artificial eyes at a position about a half mile distant from where she was. She focused her binoculars on this spot, but all she could see was the sunlight reflecting off the scope.
Was someone else running surveillance on the federal facility?
She gauged the location of this observer, jumped in her truck, and headed there as fast as possible. However, by the time she pulled down the road, ditched her truck, and made her way forward stealthily through the woods, whoever had been there was gone. She checked the road for recent marks but found none. They could have come on foot and left on foot. She checked for this, too, but found nothing helpful.
She drove back to the inn full of questions.
A little before dinnertime she walked down the steps at Martha’s Inn and found the landlady, Mrs. Burke, in the foyer gazing at her disapprovingly.
“You keep very irregular hours, young lady,” said Burke. “And you never eat meals on time. I don’t like that. It’s extra work for me.”
Michelle gazed down at the woman, a look of annoyance on her face. “Since when have I asked you to make me a special meal?”
“The point is I have to be ready to make the meal in case you request it.”
“Who says?”
“It’s a courtesy of our inn.”
“Well, thanks, but you don’t have to do it. So problem solved.”
Michelle headed past her to the front door.
“Where are you going now?” Burke asked.
“Uh, that would be out your front door and then into my truck.”
“I meant where are you going in your truck?”
“That would be none of your business.”
“Are you Southern girls always so rude?”
“Who says I’m from the South?”
“Please, I can tell from your accent.”
